Should the Pope apologize for the Nazi Holocaust? Did Christian teaching, as is
increasingly alleged, create cultural conditions that ultimately drove the Jews
to their graves during the mid-20th century? In understanding the “Holocaust
apology” scenario, we must distinguish between anti-Judaism among Christians,
and anti-Semitism in Church teaching. Individuals, groups, nations, and churches
all reacted, or failed to react, in myriad ways. Catholic complicity — to the
extent it existed — involved attitudinal anti-Judaism rather than doctrinal
anti-Semitism and this distinction needs to be understood. The anti-Semitism
that ideologically fueled the gas ovens of Auschwitz was of pagan rather than
Christian roots.

Should the Pope apologize for the Nazi Holocaust? Did Christian teaching, as is
increasingly alleged, create cultural conditions that ultimately drove the Jews
to their graves during the mid-20th century?

In
understanding the “Holocaust apology” scenario, we must distinguish between
anti-Judaism among Christians, and anti-Semitism in Church teaching. The term
anti-Judaism refers to subjective feelings of distaste towards the Jewish
people. While it is sinful for Christians to be prejudiced in this way, the
sorry truth is that such antagonism exists as a historical fact. Quite different
is the question of anti-Semitism, or a philosophical belief in the inferiority
of the Jewish race. Such a tenet does not exist and has never existed in
Catholic doctrine or social teaching. To answer these questions accurately, we
must maintain this distinction between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism.

Assessing culpability for the Nazi Holocaust is a complex issue, because varying
types and degrees of cooperation were involved. Individuals, groups, nations,
and churches all reacted, or failed to react, in myriad ways. Three things,
however, can be stated without hesitation. First, Catholic complicity — to the
extent it existed — involved attitudinal anti-Judaism rather than doctrinal
anti-Semitism. Second, the anti-Semitism that ideologically fueled the gas
ovens of Auschwitz was of pagan rather than Christian roots. The Nazis
themselves made this point as strongly as has any pope, past or present. Third,
the charge of “anti-Semitism” against the Catholic Church is contemporary,
not historical. It must therefore be understood and addressed in its
contemporary sense. An examination of that sense will show that the entire
“apology demand” scenario, in short, makes no sense at all.

OVERCOMING OUR PREJUDICES

Think, for a moment, about the difference between prejudice and racism.
This analogy as applied to a marginalized group in America will help us to
understand the European situation concerning Jews during World War II. In our
history, prejudiced Caucasians have harbored subjective feelings of distaste for
black persons solely on the basis of color. It is, of course, wrong to judge by
category rather than character, and this is what gives prejudice a bad name.
Prejudice by itself is not racism. A prejudiced person does not necessarily act
on his feelings; he might act against them. Recognizing the feelings to be
wrong, he may treat people of group identities other than his own quite
appropriately. Or he may believe his feelings are right, but he nonetheless
treats peoples of other identities well out of respect for the law.

Racism is something very different. Racists believe that certain groups are
inherently inferior to other groups. Usually, they believe the group to which
they belong is superior. White supremacists are not only prejudiced against
blacks; they hold and teach that blacks per se are not as good. Racism is
a serious evil of the intellectual rather than emotional realm, and is therefore
entirely distinguishable from prejudice. Just as a prejudiced person might not
be racist, a racist might not be prejudiced. For example, many of the
slaveholders of the American South, though racists, were “good slaveholders” who
treated their slaves well. Unfortunately, in most cases prejudice and racism go
hand in hand, and this is what makes them so hard to tell from one another.

The same kind of situation existed regarding anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism at
the time of the Nazi Holocaust. While some Catholics and other Christians may
have felt regrettable emotions of prejudice against the Jewish people,
Christianity as such did not participate in the anti-Jewish racism of the
National Socialist movement. The Commission for Religious Relations with the
Jews made this point emphatically clear in its recent document, “We Remember: A
Reflection on the Shoah.” In it, the Commission remarks:

We cannot ignore
the difference which exists between anti-Semitism, based on theories
contrary to the constant teaching of the Church on the unity of the human
race and on the equal dignity of all races and peoples, and the
long-standing sentiments of mistrust and hostility that we call
anti-Judaism, of which, unfortunately, Christians also have been
guilty.(1)

Where does anti-Judaism historically come from? Early Christians, not yet fully
grasping the meaning of Christ’s death for all mankind on the Cross, tended
sometimes to blame the Jewish people for the Crucifixion. This caused societal
misunderstanding and distrust. However, it was never a scriptural or magisterial
teaching. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church makes clear, quite the
contrary was true:

Jesus himself . .
. and Peter in following suit, both accept ‘the ignorance’ of the Jews of
Jerusalem and even of their leaders. Still less can we extend responsibility
to other Jews of different times and places[.] . . . [T]he Church does not
hesitate to impute to Christians the gravest responsibility for the torments
inflicted upon Jesus, a responsibility with which they have all too often
burdened the Jews alone (nos. 597-98).

Given this regrettable historical background, what roles did anti-Judaism and
anti-Semitism play respectively in the cataclysmic persecution collectively
called the Holocaust? While anti-Judaism may have fostered the persecution of
the Jews, anti-Semitism caused it. While sinful members of the Church may have
been prejudiced against the Jews, the one holy Catholic Church has never held
racist theories against them. Commenting on the demand for a “Holocaust apology”
from the Catholic Church, our Holy Father explained,

Indeed, in the
Christian world — I’m not saying on the part of the Church as such —
erroneous and unjust interpretations of the New Testament relative to the
Jewish people and their presumed guilt (for the Crucifixion) circulated for
too long, engendering sentiments of hostility toward this people. That
contributed to a lulling of many consciences, so that — when Europe was
swept by the wave of persecutions inspired by a pagan anti-Semitism that in
its essence was equally anti-Christian — alongside those Christians who did
everything to save those who were persecuted, even to the point of risking
their own lives, the spiritual resistance of many was not what humanity
expected of Christ’s disciples.(2)

For the prejudice against the Jews which caused some people not to live up to
their professed Christianity during the Holocaust, the Pope expresses sorrow.
For anti-Semitism on the part of the Church neither he nor anyone else can
apologize, because it does not and never did exist in the Church. When we hear,
therefore, that the Holocaust happened because the Europeans were Christians, we
can only reply that the Holocaust happened because they were not as Christian as
they should have been.

ANTI-SEMITIC AND ANTI-CHRISTIAN

The term “Aryan” originated with the occult visions of a woman named Helena
Blavatsky, who envisioned human history in terms of the ascendancy of one occult
group after another. During our times, the Aryan race was supposed to be on top.
Hitler, in his youth, abandoned the Catholic teachings of his upbringing in
order to embrace this alternate worldview. He then politicized it, identifying
“Aryan” traits with German ones, and the rest, unfortunately, is history.

There was no confusion on his part or his followers that their Nazi outlook was
at utter variance with the traditional Judeo-Christian one. “Two fronts are
clear. One is called Christianity, the other Germany. There is no third,”
declared the Nazi handbook Gott und Volk in 1942.

There is also no
compromise. We Germans have been called upon by Fate to be the first to
break with Christianity. It is an honor. A thousand blows tie us to the
Christian belief, but one blow will make us free. To make ourselves strong
and ripe for this step, is our task of holiest obligation. . . . The age of
Christian civilization is past. Only German civilization has anything to
say. We are Germans. Therefore we cannot be Christians.(3)

On
this point, their testimony concurs with that of the Magisterium of the Roman
Catholic Church. Mit Brennender Sorge, an encyclical of Pope Pius XI,
made it clear in no uncertain terms that the religion of blood and race being
spread by the National Socialists was in utter conflict with Christianity and
condemned by the Church. Pius XII bluntly called Nazism a “satanic spectre.”

The anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust did not spring from Christian
sources, but from apostasy. It wasn’t that the Church and Nazism were aligned
against the Jews, but that Nazism was aligned against both Judaism and
Christianity. The frequently ignored Christian victims of the gas ovens attest
to this fact. As “We Remember” puts it,

The Shoah was the
work of a thoroughly modern neo-pagan regime. Its anti-Semitism had its
roots outside of Christianity and, in pursuing its aims, it did not hesitate
to oppose the Church and persecute her members also.

A THOROUGHLY MODERN ALLEGATION

The charges of Holocaust-inducing anti-Semitism on the part of the Roman
Catholic Church have dubious historical origins. They did not come about at all
until the notorious 1963 play The Deputy by Rudolph Hochhuth, almost 20
years after the war ended. At the time of the second World War, the Church and
especially her spiritual head Pope Pius XII were widely acclaimed as having
opposed Nazism heroically. So if those who lived through the time of the
Holocaust didn’t blame the Church for it, and if our Holy Father Pope John Paul
II has now apologized for any residual anti-Judaism which may inadvertently have
fostered it, what more do contemporary Church critics want?

Today’s charge of anti-Semitism on the part of Roman Catholicism must be
understood, and responded to, in its contemporary context. What its proponents
want is an admission that the Church cannot make. They want an admission that
the Church is intrinsically decrepit and fallible. For this reason, their charge
of anti-Semitism cannot really be answered at all.

Take the neologism “homophobic” as an analogy here. One would think the term
referred to someone who dislikes and discriminates against homosexual persons.
Today, however, it usually means someone who holds as a religious principle that
homosexual activity is morally wrong. Someone believing this could work in AIDS
hospices, take sufferers into his own home, and approach the self-sacrifice of
Mother Teresa in assisting homosexuals in every sort of trouble. If he persisted
in these acts of mercy, all the while holding homosexual activity to be wrong,
he would be labelled “homophobic.” To change his label, he would have to change
his religious beliefs. Despite the intimidation that accompanies the label, it
is ludicrous to change a religious conviction just because others call him nasty
names.

Something similar is going on with the term “anti-Semitic.” It seems to mean a
person who dislikes and discriminates against the Jews, but this is not the case
at all. Now, like “homophobic,” it means a person who holds to orthodox
Christian tenets. Take the case of St. Maximilian Kolbe as an example. There is
abundant and uncontested evidence that he and his friars reached out to Jews and
other refugees in pre-war Poland, and that Kolbe in the camps ministered to all
alike. One young Jewish boy remembers Kolbe treating him as if he were his own
son. Yet we still hear St. Maximilian accused of “anti-Semitism” in the popular
press.

In
other words, Catholic “anti-Semitism,” like Catholic “homophobia,” is becoming
an unanswerable charge. As the surrounding culture of death increasingly defines
Catholic belief itself in these untrue and unbecoming terms, it is
impossible to avoid the labels without apostasizing. This, of course, we cannot
do. We must adhere to the full truth taught by Jesus Christ and proclaim that
truth to the culture around us. This truth witnesses to the Gospel of Life and
opposes the culture of death.

In
this way we will not only set the record straight about the Holocaust of the
Nazi era, but we also will oppose the holocaust of abortion in the strongest and
only possible terms.

ENDNOTES

“We Remember: A
Reflection on the ‘Shoah,’” Vatican Commission for Religious
Relations with the Jews, Origins, March 26, 1998, no. 4.